Once upon a time, a queen gave birth to a son so remarkably ugly that for a moment the whole room went very quiet. His nose was enormous, one leg was longer than the other, and from the very top of his head there sprouted a single extraordinary tuft of hair, as if a small bird had decided to make its nest there. But the fairies who attended his birth had not finished. One stepped forward with a kind smile. "He will be clever," she said, "more clever than any man alive — and what is more, he will have the power to give that same wit to the one person he truly loves." The queen wiped her eyes and looked at her son more carefully. His eyes, she noticed, were already dancing with curiosity.
In a neighbouring kingdom, not long after, another queen gave birth to a daughter of startling beauty — pink-cheeked, golden-eyed, perfect in every feature. The court broke into delighted applause. But one of the fairies at the cradle looked troubled. "She is lovely," the fairy said quietly, "but I am afraid she will be quite dull-witted." The mother went pale. "However," the fairy added, leaning forward to touch the baby's forehead, "she will have the power to give her own beauty to the one she loves most." The queen sighed with relief. Perhaps it would be all right. Surely the girl's beauty would carry her through — surely someone would not mind the rest.
The princess grew up and was everything the fairy had predicted: quite the most beautiful girl in the kingdom, and quite unable to hold a sensible thought for longer than a minute. She forgot things immediately after being told them. She laughed at the wrong moments and fell silent at the right ones. She could not discuss anything more complicated than the weather, and even then she sometimes got confused about whether it was raining. Noblemen came from across the land to look at her and went away shaking their heads. "What a pity," they said, which made the queen very cross, since she thought the young men were being terribly unreasonable.
Meanwhile, Prince Riquet was growing up into the most remarkable young man in his kingdom — his conversation was so brilliant, his observations so sharp and funny, that people forgot about his odd nose and his tuft of hair almost immediately. He read everything, understood everything, and had a way of explaining difficult things that made you feel wonderfully clever for understanding them. His mother adored him. His tutors ran out of things to teach him by the time he was twelve. He had heard, of course, about the beautiful princess with the dull mind, and he had thought about her with a great deal of quiet interest.
One afternoon the princess was walking alone in a wood near the palace, feeling thoroughly sorry for herself and not quite knowing why, when she heard footsteps on the path and found herself face to face with the strangest-looking young man she had ever seen. He had a giant nose, mismatched legs, and a tuft of hair like a startled bird. She stared. Then, because she had always been kind even if she had not been clever, she said politely, "Good afternoon." Riquet bowed very deeply. "Your Highness," he said, and his voice was warm and interesting and not at all what she had expected. "I have waited a long time to find you here."
They sat together on a mossy bank and Riquet talked. He talked about ideas and stories and the shapes of clouds and the logic of beehives and the history of ancient kingdoms, and the princess found — for the first time in her life — that she was completely absorbed. She asked questions. They were good questions. Riquet answered them and asked some back, and she discovered that she had answers. Opinions. Thoughts that connected to other thoughts. She could feel something waking up in her mind like sunlight moving across a cold floor. When she looked at Riquet, he was smiling as if this was the happiest afternoon of his life. "I have a gift for you," he said, "if you will accept it."
"I can give you wit — true wit, the kind that delights in thinking and never runs dry," Riquet said, "but there is a condition. You must promise to marry me in one year's time." The princess looked at him. He was, she thought, really very kind. And those eyes — she had not noticed before how extraordinary they were, dark and warm and full of light. "Yes," she said, without quite meaning to say it so quickly. "I promise." Riquet smiled, and something passed between them that was impossible to describe — like a door opening somewhere in her chest. The princess felt her mind fill and sharpen and glow. She looked around the wood and saw everything more clearly than she ever had before.
From that day forward the princess was transformed. She spoke at court with wit and precision that astonished everyone. She read books and debated philosophers and wrote letters so excellent that the recipients kept them for years. Ambassadors sought her counsel. Young princes came to talk with her and stayed for hours, forgetting entirely that they had originally come to admire her face. Her mother was overjoyed. The princess was happy too — though sometimes she found herself thinking of a particular afternoon in the wood, and a particular pair of dark eyes, and felt something warm and unresolved turning over in her heart.
The year passed. Then one morning, walking again in the same wood, the princess heard familiar footsteps. Riquet appeared around the bend in the path, looking exactly as he always had — the great nose, the mismatched legs, the extraordinary tuft — but dressed in his finest tunic of gold and teal, with a small bouquet of wildflowers in his hand. "I believe a year has passed," he said, with a careful smile. The princess stopped. She had made a promise, and she knew it. But she looked at him and felt a tangle of feelings she could not yet name: gratitude, warmth, the memory of that afternoon, and also — honestly — a little dismay at the nose.
"I remember my promise," the princess said slowly, sitting down on the bank. "And I know that you gave me the greatest gift anyone has ever given me. I think about our conversation every day." She paused. "But—" Riquet sat beside her, unhurried and undefended. "Tell me honestly what troubles you," he said. "Honesty is one of the things I most admire." The princess looked at him — really looked, the way she looked at everything now that her mind was awake — and said, with the frankness that only clever people dare: "I think I may already love you. But I am not sure I see you as—" She stopped. Something was changing in the quality of the light.
The princess blinked. Riquet's face had not changed — not a feature was different — and yet she saw him entirely differently. The nose she had called large now seemed characterful. The mismatched legs she had called awkward were simply how he stood. The eyes — those extraordinary dark, warm, dancing eyes — were the most beautiful she had ever seen. She understood in that moment what the fairy had meant all those years ago in her cradle: the one she loved would seem beautiful to her. She had given him her gift without knowing it, in the wood, on the afternoon she asked her first good question. "Riquet," she said, and her voice was quite steady. "I think I have been in love with you for some time."
They were married in the spring, in a ceremony full of flowers and music and excellent speeches that everyone remembered. The court was puzzled at first — the prince was so very odd-looking — but they had only to watch the two of them together for half an hour to understand. He made her laugh. She made him think harder. Each one looked at the other as if the other were the most remarkable person in any room. Years later, visitors to the kingdom would ask how to recognise the royal couple, and the answer was always the same: they are the two people in the room who are most interested in each other. Love, it turned out, was a way of seeing — and once you had learned to see, you could not unlearn it.
